Nary means not one, in dialect or old use. Nary a word, nary a soul, nary a one.
It is always followed by a and it is regional — American Southern and British dialect — and now mostly deliberate colour. Nary a word means not a single word. The origin is a contraction: nary is ne'er a, which is never a, worn down over time.
1adjectivenaryNot one.
“There was nary a cloud in the sky all week.”
nary is a negative quantity word.
Nary is a contraction of ne'er a, meaning never a. The phrase wore down into a single word.
ne'er + a.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire